Sugar Ray Training Hard for Comeback

WASHINGTON —  Sugar Ray Leonard traded leather with Robert (Boo Boo) Sawyer, a southpaw pretending to be Marvelous Marvin Hagler. You could tell he wasn’t because his head wasn’t bald.

One other thing was apparent: Leonard’s frequent smiles and easy banter with a friendly audience (“Looking good, Ray”) in the Sugar Ray Leonard gym last week told that he was happy to be back--even though Hagler has vowed to change that mood April 6, saying with a scowl, “There’s no friends in that ring.”

Working to get ready for Marvin Hagler. For Sugar Ray Leonard, that’s sweetness.

“Hagler hates the grind of training,” Leonard’s trainer, Angelo Dundee, said recently. “He’s like Rocky Marciano. That’s why Marciano retired.

“For us, it’s not a grind, it’s a fun thing.”

Three sometimes-furious rounds with Boo Boo Sawyer brought to 125 the number of rounds Leonard has boxed since he challenged Hagler on May 1. By the time they meet for the middleweight title, Leonard expects to box another 125. He says it’s not a job, but a joy.

“The key to being prepared,” said Leonard, getting his hands taped, “is not to overindulge”--to do too much too soon.

At long last, Leonard has arrived at the point in his life that he has craved--he can focus entirely on Hagler, knowing they will meet. Even when he’s not in the gym, Leonard will spend considerable time on the road with, of all people, Hagler.

In the next few weeks, Leonard will break up his training routine with promotional drum-beating appearances with the champion. In the next few weeks, Leonard and Hagler will visit numerous cities in a road show that would please P.T. Barnum.

“I’ve got one job to do, and that is to get ready for Hagler,” said Leonard. “But we have so much time. I can get intense, slow it down.

“In May, I was somewhat intense because we hadn’t heard from Hagler and we didn’t know when the fight was going to be. Now we won’t get intense until January. Then it will become more calculating--studying tapes of my training, tapes of Hagler’s fights. Condition is no problem at all.”

One of his trainers, Janks Morton, said Leonard’s “intense” work of early summer has brought him to “fighting condition now.”

“He’s had time to get in shape,” said Morton, peering through the ring ropes at his man at work. “It started to show the last part of September, early October. His reflexes--you could see it when he started putting combinations together.

“We’ve already had more time now than we had to get in shape for Howard”--the Kevin Howard fight of May 1984, for which Leonard did not prepare well enough. He won but, after being knocked down, wishes everyone would forget it.

“Now,” said Morton, “we’ve got all the time in the world.”